Advancements in wireless communication technology have greatly increased the versatility of today's wireless communication devices. These advancements have enabled wireless communication devices to evolve from simple mobile telephones and pagers into sophisticated computing devices capable of a wide variety of functionality such as multimedia recording and playback, event scheduling, word processing, e-commerce, etc. As a result, users of today's wireless communication devices are able to perform a wide range of tasks from a single, portable device that conventionally required either multiple devices or larger, non-portable equipment.
Wireless communication devices are configured for operation within one or more wireless communication networks, which may differ according to radio access technology, network architecture, or other properties. For instance, wireless communication networks include centralized networks, in which wireless communication devices communicate through central entities such as base stations or access points, as well as peer-to-peer networks, in which wireless communication devices communicate directly among each other without a central network element. In order to establish links for communication within a peer-to-peer wireless network, participating devices identify and initialize communication with each other through a process referred to as device discovery.